Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

moonbender writes "The Linux kernel has received birthday wishes from an unexpected direction — a video animation from Microsoft. Quoting The H: 'The video picks up on the strained relationship between Microsoft and Linux by displaying the phrase "Microsoft Vs. Linux" and then showing Tux, the Linux mascot, turning his back on the offer of a birthday cake from Microsoft. After a brief outline of the history between Microsoft and Linux, the video ends with a conciliatory gesture: Tux accepts the birthday cake in his igloo and the video ends with "Happy Birthday" and the editing of the initial phrase to "Microsoft and Linux?' The Linux Foundation has more stuff celebrating the kernel's 20th birthday."

I read this as a slight against Linux. It is disrespect--they go hide in their igloos and eat the cake in secret?

I think the general philosophy that has clearly been reiterated by the Linux community is there is absolutely no room for trust in Microsoft. They are a convicted monopolist and have called upon everyone to view Linux as a cancer. They continue to use their patents to extort payment from large and small with bogus insubstantiated claims against Linux. They are the company that uses embrace extend extinguish. This animation represents the same underhanded intentions.

I'd get into it with you, but I'm getting rather exhausted discussing these types of issues with people missing a fundamental understanding of economics. Suffice it to say: Canada has been systematically reducing its various tax rates and cutting government services since the mid-90s. The consequences? GDP grew. Tax revenuesincreased. Unemployment went from 12% to 6%. The dollar went from being worth $0.67 USD to about $1.04 USD. Government deficits were eliminated (until recent economic downturn) and the

Oh for christ sake. It's not even Linux that Microsoft needs to be worried about, it's Mac OSX and whatever will be next iteration in Apple's desktop computers (they're taking it the iOS route slowly). Macs are starting to get games, it has Steam already too. It has slowly gained desktop marketshare. Linux has pretty much stayed the same for the last 10 years in its desktop marketshare. On servers Windows servers and Linux servers are pretty much 50/50 and Mac has almost no marketshare (yes, Windows really

Android is currently dealing with it's own problems with ever increasing competing versions and code forks, security issues introduced by dodgy integration with company specific add-on modules, and of course the ever growing anxiety caused by patent trolls. MS has already successfully obtained their tax using their patent holdings and I seriously doubt they will be the last company to do so. Apple is in the best position since they still remain in control of their platform and can provide consistency. At on

Which is why MS is adding official CentOS support to HyperV, which is why an MS employee is president of the C++ standards committee, which is why MS is helping AMD with their opensource framework to make threading easier and cross-platform, which is why MS is offering help for any platform to implement C++AMP, which is what AMD's FUSION framework is based on and AMD is pouring resources into making this fully opensource and MS is helping them do it.

I would agree with this. Time will tell, but they definitely are changing. I had a chance to meet with a few senior people at MS recently and their attitude as compared to the attitude of people in similar positions at MS I met with 15 years ago is dramatic. They're now all "Aw shucks, we want to do the right thing, how can we help?"

I also was able to meet with some (middle management) people at Google and their attitude reminded me very strongly of MS's behavior 15 years ago: They don't listen to what othe

To this day, Microsoft is trying to shake down smartphone vendors using Android for 15 bux per phone "protection" against patent extortion^W lawsuits.

What patents, you ask? Well, we don't know. The only company that seems to have stood up to this kind of patent shakedown is Google in its battle with Oracle ("We read your patents and found them wanting"). To this day, nobody has a list of those 235 patents that Microsoft owns and that Linux supposedly infringes - hidden behind a wall of NDAs.

I completely agree. The undertones in the video is extremely profound.

Microsoft is the big boy is has always been nice. Linux is a child trying to break Microsoft completely out of the blue. Linux is small but plays games to elevate themselves to the same level as Microsoft. Linux can't stand toe to toe with Windows so it has to sneak around in the shadows and only gets to eat what Microsoft gives them.

Microsoft does not do what everyone else does - or at least didn't used to. Microsoft got as big as it did because it got very lucky, IBM fucked up, and they used illegal, frequently unethical practices to maintain and grow. That does not describe most companies. Hell, Microsoft really is a piss poor technology company but that are one of the world's best marketing companies.

Furthermore Microsoft has a long history of playing nice and the completely fucking over whoever is dumb enough to take them at their

The way your post is written, it implies a proprietary product can be "accidentally" "infected" by the GPL and be forced to open. This is not true at all, unless your development methodology is just utterly careless and you routinely lift code from other sources or use libraries without bothering to see how they're licensed.

Microsoft's attitude in all this has been pretty consistent: they love having a wealth of free code out there they can appropriate, modify, close up, and sell. They have little interest

They backed the SCO case until the end.They are/still/ shaking down companies for "sekrit patent dealz" if they use Linux (android).

Microsoft is not to be trusted. Ever.

With regards to the GPL, it has to be explained every fucking time to people like you who don't get it. "If you don't like the GPL, don't include GPL code in your project!" Seriously, you make it sound as if GPL actively goes out and "infects" pro

With the way the Apple juggernaut has been steamrolling it would make sense to me for Microsoft and Open Source in general to find a way of co-existing. Say what you want about Microsoft, but Apple's heavy-handed, strict controls and policies makes Microsoft look like a pussy cat in comparison.

With the way the Apple juggernaut has been steamrolling it would make sense to me for Microsoft and Open Source in general to find a way of co-existing.

I think that people within Microsoft are actually very appreciative of Open Source and of Apple in the sense that those other OSes are doing cool stuff, which pushes everyone to do better and 'one-up' the others. This pushes creativity within the OS and interoperability between the OSes in general. In the end, we all like to hate Microsoft or Apple or Linux or BSD because they are not our personal favorite and they are faceless monoliths. It's a lot tougher to hate another programmer or designer just becaus

That bitchy company named Microsoft keeps screwing every fucking STANDARD out there and about 80% of the damn WORLD helps them doing it! Then they complain that somethings don't work and aren't standard.br/>Die, microsoft, die.

Both of those died of natural causes and were dying long before Microsoft became as overpowering as it did. You forget that IBM was equally evil and controlling back then. This was a battle of two giants - not David and Goliath.

it would make sense to me for Microsoft and Open Source in general to find a way of co-existing.

Microsoft has decided they have found that way: patent royalties. A Linux programmer paid by someone else writes the code, and Microsoft receives revenue from someone else's work (while simultaneously creating a deterrent for others in the same industry).

All the software industry needs, is roll over and accept that programmers (and their customers) can never be free.

With the way the Apple juggernaut has been steamrolling it would make sense to me for Microsoft and Open Source in general to find a way of co-existing. Say what you want about Microsoft, but Apple's heavy-handed, strict controls and policies makes Microsoft look like a pussy cat in comparison.

Apple is even more of a contradiction than Microsoft. They have and continue to make useful contributions to a variety of important Free Software projects (probably much more than MS has done), such as GCC, CUPS and Webkit. They use those projects as well as lots of proprietary code to restrict users horribly. In fact, there are many corporations, including Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Google which use and contribute to Linux and many other Free Software projects while maintaining an ambivalence toward the pr

They sued Tom Tom for merely using a Linux kernel that included FAT32 support. So basically, everything on the planet that ships with Linux could be sued for the same criteria. Someone needs to stand up to these lawsuits.

Only a small (though loud) minority of Linux users believes in a Microsoft vs Linux fight. Linux was created in 1991 to be a POSIX compliant kernel, not to be a competitor to MS. The GNU tools were created to have a free Unix. GNU + Linux is a fine example of open source in the Unix world, and is definitely not a reaction/fight/whatever towards Microsoft.

Only a small (though loud) minority of Linux users believes in a Microsoft vs Linux fight. Linux was created in 1991 to be a POSIX compliant kernel, not to be a competitor to MS.

This isn't how it works, though. For those of us who actually remember MS in the 90s (and onto the 00s), it MS vs Linux simply because Linux had the potential to (and, obviously eventually has) become a huge competitor in the server and corporate market if never the desktop market. This is from Microsoft's perspective. Linux was not created as a competitor, but they eventually saw it that way, and have had any number of anti-Linux and anti-FOSS marketing campaigns over the past decade or so, in addition to incompatible changes to protocols, trying to not interoperate, hijack open standards, and simply give their stuff away to keep people from switching.

It's nice that they want to whitewash history and pretend Linux was the snobby competitor that has eventually come to play nicely with them, but it's quite the opposite. If anything, this is the indication we've moved from "then they fight you" to "then you win".

There may not be a Linux vs Microsoft fight, but there is definitely a Microsoft vs Linux fight. In their own words:

* OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.

* OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

* They have paid for numerous "independent" studies to show that Linux and LAMP are inferior to Windows and IIS.* Leaked emails have shown them to have been funneling money to SCO via Baystar.* They continue to spread FUD about patent licensing, and have sued major Android manufacturers for patent royalties.

They clearly see this as an Us vs Them situation. We don't have to respond likewise, but it would be foolish not to acknowledge their intentions.

Only a small (though loud) minority of Linux users believes in a Microsoft vs Linux fight. Linux was created in 1991 to be a POSIX compliant kernel, not to be a competitor to MS. The GNU tools were created to have a free Unix. GNU + Linux is a fine example of open source in the Unix world, and is definitely not a reaction/fight/whatever towards Microsoft.

You've obviously been paying no attention whatsoever to servers and phones, where MS is very much in direct competition with various *nix, including various GNU/Linux and other Linux-based operating systems. Servers have been dominated by *nix for decades though MS is always trying to gain more market share. Phones will soon (if not already) be completely dominated by *nix, where Android is one of the most important software platforms. MS is also pushing phone development hard. Though there is much competit

Windows NT was created "to be POSIX compliant". One can formally follow POSIX and still end up with unusable shit.

not to be a competitor to MS.

Microsoft marketing should really shut up about any of this. Currently there are three kinds of general-purpose operating systems -- minimal, Unix-like and total crap. Microsoft is firmly in "total crap" category. Unfortunately Microsoft is trying to destroy absolutely everything that even remotely resembles a piece of software, especially things that are superior to its products. This means, th

The bottom line is, these are all big BUSINESSES, with an unwavering goal of maximizing profits for their shareholders. When you see all of this "back and forth" between competitors, where one month they're bashing each other and the next, their CEOs are on TV together acting friendly? Remember that NONE of it really means much.

I'm pretty sure that on a personal level, almost all of these tech company "higher ups" have mutual respect for each other. After all, people in similar income brackets tend to have a lot of common interests. (A Bill Gates type isn't likely to have a lot of fun going on the same discounted vacation cruises that your typical family signs up for in the summer, etc. Your idea of a "nice hotel" and his probably aren't the same, nor are your typical "good, yet affordable" restaurant choices, right?) And they share a common interest in furthering high-tech products or services for the masses in SOME manner, even if they differ on the details of exactly HOW they think the future should unfold with them.

By the same token, most of the employees of these firms are just software developers, systems administrators and Q.A. testers trying to earn a paycheck in their field of interest. Guys I knew who coded apps for Microsoft often used Linux or a Mac at home, even if they really liked what Microsoft was doing. (Hey, if nothing else, it's refreshing to come home to something different than what you've got to use at work all day long!)

I'm pretty sure a lot of this animosity we hear of between competitors is cooked up by P.R. and marketing/advertising types. If you've got a product you can get people to rally behind, it's very profitable to pretend you're at "war" with the competition -- even if the C.E.O. of the main competitor is one of your company's C.E.O.'s drinking buddies and they negotiate co-operative deals in the background on a regular basis.

In a not so distant windows release. We will eventually have standard apis across hardware & platforms, and the oses will compete purely on features and performance while all running the programs. They'll no longer have differing APIs if they want to survive. MS sees this and has plans to ride it as far as they can, across their whole spectrum of products - windows phone, xbox, windows for pc - while Apple, Sony, Android restrict themselves to the developers in their respective markets who don't want

Entirely reasonable, they could sell an MS window manager as "MS Windows" and still sell office exchange, sql server, etc. At the same prices they have now. It would certainly be a loss in revenue compared to being one of many OS's but they would still be the 800 lb gorilla and people would still pay $100 to buy or demand their oem machines come with the MS window manager and applications set.

I don't see this as a likely outcome, yet the very idea is interesting. Apple wouldn't be where it is currently without replacing the OS9 junk with BSD, replacing NT with Linux could make Windows actually usable for something more than rootkit-laden games.

I'm not sure I understand. Based on the summary, this video was supposed to have been created by Microsoft? It was posted by The Linux Foundation and doesn't seem like a video that would be produced by Microsoft (not so much the style or content, but the perspective; it doesn't seem like it's Microsoft telling the story at all).

Instead, it plays like some sort of lead-up to an announcement OSDL/TLF are planning to make...?

You want to be conciliatory? Skip the flash animation wankery and give us real ExtN filesystem support instead of making us rely on flaky third-party implementations or having to drop what we're doing and reboot to access a damn USB drive...

This video looks to me like they are making a friendly hint of things to come. I know it would sound like blasphemy to many, but I could imagine they might want to make a such a monumental change to compete in mobile, where they are currently all but non-existent.

Why not? There's absolutely nothing saying they couldn't build their own distro on top of Linux or (most likely) BSD. In fact, I would advocate for that - less resources put into the backend work would allow more resources put into the user experience. It's the blueprint Apple used on OSX and it worked.

a) Geek working at MS creates a cute birthday animation. For kicks, 'cause it's cool.b) PR dept. gets hold of it somehowc) Pr dept. thinks it would be a cute idea to show some reconciliation attempt.d) Geek gets a pat on the back and video is now "officially MS property".

Oh oh I get it now! This movie is the M$ attempted reality-distortion-field of the movie "Antitrust" ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/ [imdb.com] ) and all the groklaw coverage of the M$-backed SCO trial;D